Another Millionaires Budget

Cutting income tax make no sense to me at all, it is one of the few truly progressive taxes, the more you earn the more you pay. (That is until you get so rich you just avoid tax). The cut also gives employers an excuse to persistently refuse to increase wages in line with anything approaching inflation.

Osborne has chosen to cut income tax. This may seem like a good idea so I went on the BBCs budget predictor and put in my pay: I save £300 in income tax this year. Great you might think, not me... I then lied to the BBCs predictor to find out what would happen if I was a hedge fund manager instead of a Lecturer. I put in a salary of a million quid,  just for a laugh. It wasn't funny. Osborne's budget would grant 'millionaire me' a £42000 tax cut. That's enough to give every child  in my daughters primary school free school meals for a whole year.

Because the economy is not growing, such lavish tax cuts have to paid for: Osborne has told each 'government department' to cut an additional 1% on top of the cuts he has already inflicted. When terms like 'government department' are used it makes people think that it has no effect. What we are talking about here are public services. The Tories are giving the rich a tax cut and paying for it by cutting services that the rich can afford not to utilise.

This Chancellor is stubbornly sticking to plan A and this budget promises more of the same: More Champagne for him and his millionaire chums. The rest of us just have to make do with the pain bit.

Liam Carr